Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

On average, a disruptive technology arrives every 10 years. These technologies create new markets and change the way we interact with each other, work with data, find entertainment, or change the way we see our world. COSMIAC believes that one such technology is Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR).

In the coming months many VR/AR platforms will be available to the public that will change the way we work, watch movies, and play games. Some of these platforms include Facebook’s Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Microsoft’s Hololens, and Magic Leap.

Many content providers, like YouTube, already provide VR content with many more coming soon (for example Netflix). Many modern Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools already provide VR/AR plugins to aid in development (Solidworks, Autodesk, Keyshot, Rhino3D, etc.).

While it is clear the VR/AR is here to stay we need to find a way to provide current developers, and students, the tools to create for all these platforms. This is the purpose for the Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) project. OSVR allows COSMIAC to explore the limits of VR/AR while providing students with the tools required to learn about this exciting new technology!

Students are able to work with the OSVR platform at every level. This means students will not only work with software libraries, but also the hardware, enclosure, and add new features. Finally all the work done by the students contributes to the OSVR project so that others may benefit from their work.